Russian prisoners' lexicon is colourful and full of historical references. Soon, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the two members of the rock band Pussy Riot who are still imprisoned, will discover the inside of a "Stolypin wagon", a special windowless railway carriage, divided internally into a series of iron-barred cells. These carriages, named after the Tsarist prime minister who introduced them in 1906, have been used for over a century to transport prisoners to penal colonies, many in the remote geographical margins.

Like most convicted prisoners in Russia, they will not be within easy reach of their families. The majority of women convicted in Moscow courts are taken to correctional colonies located between 200km and 500km from the capital. The south-west corner of Mordovia, one of the constituent ethnic republics of the Russian Federation, is 400km away and I visited its three women's correctional colonies on a research trip in 2007-8.

Journeys to prison in Russia can follow meandering routes criss-crossing Russia as convicted prisoners – men, women, juveniles – are collected from remand and transit prisons over a wide area. It is for good reason that prisoners refer to the transportation as the estafeta, or relay-race.

To all intents and purpose, prisoners disappear into a black hole during transportation, re-emerging only when they arrive at their destination colony. One girl we interviewed in L'govo, a juvenile colony south of Moscow, described how it had taken three months to transport her from Ukhta in the remote European north, during which time she was out of contact with anyone on the outside. Her parents learned of her whereabouts only two weeks after she had arrived in L'govo.

Deep in the taiga, the Mordovian colonies are well away from prying eyes. Svetlana Bakhmina, imprisoned for her part in the "Yukos affair" that saw oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky being sent to a colony in the Russian Far East, was taken to Mordovia. With 14-15,000 prisoners and 17 penal colonies, this is one of the largest penal complexes in Europe.

Russia's "correctional colonies" are unlike any prisons in the west. High wooden fences are topped by razor wire and watch towers. When Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova arrive in their colony they will be taken immediately into a quarantine block to be assessed to determine which otryad, or detachment, they will join for the duration of their sentence. At this point, they will surrender their civilian clothes and exchange them for the blue or grey serge prison uniform and headscarf that has to be worn at all times of the day.

The otryad has been the basic building block of Russian penal institutions for eight decades. It refers both to a physical space – communal dormitory, common room and washroom – and the 100-120 women occupying it. Prisoners spend roughly half of any 24 hours in the block where their detachment is housed. Each has her own bunk bed and bedside cabinet with little spare floor space between. The two Pussy Riot members can expect to be allocated the top of the two or three-tier bunks, where it can be stuffy and uncomfortable in the crowded dormitories. They will have to earn the right within the detachment to "move down". Their fellow prisoners will be a mixture of first-time offenders and seasoned recidivists, convicted for offences ranging from petty theft to murder. Around one-third will be imprisoned for drug-related offences. Sentences are long by European standards; the average for women is 5.4 years.

Russia has long used the principle of "prisoner self-organisation" to get jobs done around the detachment blocks and to organise prisoners' daily lives. A woman, usually with a long sentence, is designated by the administration as "head monitor". Her job is to keep order in the detachment, make sure domestic tasks are done and to liaise with the prison authorities. She is supported by various prisoners' committees responsible for health and safety, cleanliness, energy saving, and also psychological counselling. Cultural and social activities are also organised on a detachment basis, including the annual beauty contest (variously called "Miss Colony", "Miss Spring", "Miss Personality"). Everyone is encouraged to participate and this is essential if a prisoner can be expected to be successful in a bid for early release.

Penal authorities insist that self-organisation helps rehabilitation by giving prisoners responsibilities. But not all the prisoners see it like that. Some of the women we spoke to said that the so-called "activists" use their position to bully other prisoners and complained about the constant "pressure to participate" and "incessant" competitions. Trust levels in women's colonies are low, with everyone suspecting each other of being an informant. But the most common complaint is lack of privacy: the inability to find any place to be alone. Raisa, three years into a seven-year sentence, told me that she was a sociable person on the outside but that in the colony she just wanted to withdraw: "I usually try to hide behind a book or embroidery or I try to escape to somewhere. There are 120 people in the otryad. You can't even be alone in the toilet! And sometimes you think – God, will there ever be peace? Isn't there anywhere I can be alone?"

When not in the detachment block, prisoners are at work. These jobs are compulsory for anyone who is able-bodied and not a pensioner. Every morning after the first roll call on the colony parade ground women divide up into work brigades to be escorted to the colony production zone. In Mordovia, women inmates make uniforms for the emergency services and armed forces and decorate matrioshki (nested dolls) and other toys for the tourist industry. The working day is long, breaks short and the rewards small, for although the women earn a wage, most is paid over to the colony for their upkeep. The most sought after jobs are in the canteen, laundry and library, but they are reserved for the most reliable inmates.

Some women's correctional colonies have nurseries for infants under the age of three. There are currently about 750 babies in Russia's penal colonies living in mini-detachment blocks. Their mothers return to their own otryad soon after giving birth, visiting their infants in their spare time or at set intervals if they are breastfeeding. Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova's children are both over three and so will stay at home with their carers. In theory, Filipp and Gera can be taken to see their mothers but prisoners' entitlement to visits is not generous (four long and six short visits a year). Yet for most prisoners the question of visits is academic. According to the prison service's own census, nearly three quarters of all women receive no visits at all. Family breakdowns and loss of contact with children is frequent among women prisoners. In many cases, the long journey to the penal colonies is simply too expensive or too difficult for ageing parents, partners or young children to make. The penal service recognises that the remote location of its correctional colonies is a problem; its most recent solution is to suggest that prisoners talk with their loved ones by Skype.

The arrest and trial of Pussy Riot was seen as a barometer of the direction in which Russia under Putin is moving. The Federal Penal Service rejected a request from Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova to serve their remaining time in Moscow; given the high profile nature of their case, they are afraid for their safety in the communal environment of a correctional colony. It seems there will be no reprieve from the "relay-race", a journey undertaken by far too many women before them, and one that must surely confirm the gloomier predictions about Putin's Russia.

Professor Judith Pallot is professor of the human geography of Russia at the University of Oxford.

Gender, Geography and Punishment: Women's Experiences of Carceral Russia by Judith Pallot and Laura Piacentini is published by Oxford University Press.